PEDAGOGYW PEDAGOGY
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important educational technology in history. Before classroom teaching, people primarily learned from each other on a one‑to-one basis. This is often described as an ‘apprenticeship model’. In principle, we learn more effectively this way. Yet when the classroom emerged, somewhere in the distant medieval past, there was no turning back. Over the centuries, a greater amount of technology was used but the basic model has hardly changed. In a business school, there are many complex topics that require specific technologies, much as the sciences often use labs for teaching. However, the question remains: Have we become too dependent on indoor surroundings? Our migration from outdoors to indoors has, coincidentally, happened just as the environment became so important. Did our seclusion within our infrastructure lead to a failure to notice what was happening outside? Of course, education was just one area that became industrialised. In the world of business and commerce, a new scientific approach that emphasised planning, organising, leading and controlling came into ascendancy. Now,
tanding in the cold October rain in Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, I am reminded that outdoor learning is not always as exciting as it sounds. Currently, I’m looking out for delivery vans. Why is that, you may ask? Because I am planning a campus field trip for an undergraduate course that I teach. The lecture will be to discuss the role
of compassion in business, using a case study about Amazon. Students will be asked to observe delivery vans operating in the area and how they behave. What sort of working environment do the drivers operate in and how does this affect their behaviour? In this way, the exercise draws a neat connecting line between management theory and concrete experience. If the Covid-inspired dissolution of the campus in 2020 has taught us anything, it is how dependent we are on the classroom. The classroom is probably the most persistent and
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Ambition | DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024
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